My Thermopylae
by Night Hunter MGS
Summary: In the final hour of the planet Reach, just after the escape of mankind's last best hope, the final thoughts of SPARTAN-B312, Noble 6.


**My Thermopylae**

Author's Notes: What can I say; I spent a whole night watching the cutscenes for Halo: Reach over and over again. I couldn't help but compare it to 300 and see the parallels between the Battle of Reach and the Battle of Thermopylae. The thought, the comparison stuck in my mind and wouldn't let me go. I felt inspired and absolutely needed to write this before I worked on anything else. (So Erynnar, please forgive me, and the Loghain piece WILL be written… eventually. -_-; My other readers, please soothe Erynnar's righteous rage against me by going and reading her fanfics set in her own unique Dragon Age fan universe, Soulmates, Whispering Sighs of the Blade, and The First Cut Is Always the Deepest.) Note that this fic has been written so that any version of Noble 6 can fit into it, so feel free to envision your own SPARTAN standing on the glassed surface of Reach, thinking these final thoughts. This work is dedicated to the characters of Noble Team, who made us love them even though we knew them to be doomed, and to all those who stand up and fight even in their bleakest hour and never surrender.

Disclaimer: The Halo universe and all associated intellectual properties, in particular Halo: Reach, the SPARTAN Program, and Noble Team, belong to the geniuses at Bungie and Microsoft.

Summary: The final thoughts of SPARTAN-B312.

_The world is burning, on fire around me. Once the jewel of the UNSC, a testament to both our civilization and military might, now it lays in ruins of twisted steel, shattered concrete, and glassed earth. Reach has fallen, as we knew it would the moment the Covenant found it. From the very beginning, we knew how this would end. Knew, just as every man and woman given the name Spartan knows when the legacy for which we are titled comes to claim us, the only way it could end. Each of us, every single member of Noble Team, knew deep in their guts that this was our final fight, our last stand._

_Reach was our Thermopylae._

_One by one, we've fallen, until only I'm left. Only I remain, standing at the proverbial Hot Gates, waiting for the enemy that surrounds me. Noble Team… My team… The brothers and sister in arms that I hadn't allowed myself to have for as long as I can remember. All of them… True Spartans. And they all fought and died like Spartans._

_Jorge…Noble 5… Our team's resident SPARTAN-II. I can admit, I was in some degree of awe of him from the moment I first saw him. No matter what, we III's will never replace the II's, they're a cut above us just as much as we're a cut above the average UNSC Marine or ODST. But that didn't stop him from being one of us, of being our soul. How can somebody who was bred and raised as a soldier, a killing machine, have a heart as big as his size? You could tell from the way he spoke, the way he looked at the world around him through his polarized visor, how much he loved Reach, both the planet and its people. A love that led him to give his life in the forlorn hope that it could save the planet he treasured; my retinas are still seared by the flash of light as the slipspace drive ruptured, taking the Covenant Corvette, the Supercarrier, and the SPARTAN-II with it._

_Kat… Noble 2… Her death was probably both the best and the worst. Best in that it was quick, clean, without her having a chance to feel any pain, fear, or regret. Worst in that she never had the chance to fight back, to go out like a hero, a SPARTAN. Just a single millisecond and the Covenant sniper round went tearing through the top of her head and sent her falling to the ground in mid-stride. I remember clutching her body, so still, to me as we emerged from the shelter. I remember thinking how it seemed a pointless, meaningless death after all she'd already survived. I remember seeing some of the life leave Carter's eyes after hers was ended, after we had to leave the body of the last remaining member of his original team behind in the rubble. If Jorge was our soul, she was our brains, brilliant and quick witted with a gift for technology better than anyone else I'd ever met._

_Jun… Noble 3… The last I saw of him was the sight of him getting into the Pelican with Dr. Halsey even as I left in another with the rest of the team, carrying the AI that had been entrusted to me. It's possible he's still alive, but for how long? Even if he doesn't get caught in the glassing, how many Covenant can he take down with his sniper rifle before he's cornered, trapped, with no way out? How can a man who can blend into the very shadows hide from inevitable death when the shadows themselves are boiled away in the light of Covenant energy projectors? Still, if anyone can survive in this hell it's Jun, Noble's instinct and cunning._

_Carter… Noble 1… Boss… Whatever you call him one thing is without doubt. As a leader and a SPARTAN Carter was peerless. He was in total command, but he was open to ideas and suggestions. He followed his orders, but he would go to bat for any one of his Spartans without hesitation even if it meant threatening the most valued scientific mind in the entire UNSC as I saw when Dr. Halsey threatened Kat with a court martial and the Commander stood up for her. From the moment I met him, he made it clear that as long as I worked with the team he welcomed me even if the rest of them didn't; it was an indescribable feeling, being part of someone's team and having a commander who valued me as more than a personal Grim Reaper. With his leadership, he turned Noble Team into far more than an elite team of super-soldiers; he turned it into a family, a family that he even made room to include me into. As painful as being powerless to save Jorge or shocking it had been to hold Kat's limp body, it was seeing the blood splattered about the Pelican's cockpit and hearing Carter's pained gasps for breath that broke my heart. His final words "you're on your own Noble" resonates in my ears, a bitter irony considering his first order to me was to "leave the lone wolf stuff behind". When he crashed the Pelican into the Scarab blocking the path of me and Emile, it felt like Noble Team had truly died; because if Jorge was Noble's soul, Kat the brains, and Jun the instincts then Carter was without a doubt Noble's heart._

_Emile… Noble 4… Noble's passion, its fury, its warrior spirit. If any SPARTAN ever gave the Covenant cause to call us "demons", it was Emile. Even in his death, he proved that. Having Elites dropped right on top of him as he manned the Mass Driver at Aszod, rather than abandon his indefensible position he fought back. The sight of a Zealot falling to the metal grating, Emile's shotgun blast taking it's head off as he stood defiantly and shouted for the next enemy to come challenge him, honestly made me smile at just how him it was. But then that smile turned to a silent scream as he was stabbed in the back by another Zealot's energy sword. Even then, he fought. He screamed defiance into the alien's face, saying he was ready to die and asking if his opponent felt the same, before stabbing it right in the face with his prized kukri knife. Both fell, Emile taking his killer with him._

_And then only I was left. Standing as the last member of Noble, the unwanted new team mate, Noble 6. A lifetime spent alone, working as a solo operative for ONI command, hadn't prepared me for just how good it was to fight with other Spartans, to be part of a team. And just as I found my team, I lost them. When I refused to board the Pelican to safety with Keyes, I cited duty, to man the gun and protect the cargo. But in my heart, I just didn't want to leave Noble Team behind, to leave my newfound family behind. Like them, I am going to give my last breath for this doomed world._

_But like those near mythical figures standing firm on the rocky shores of ancient Greece thousands of years ago, our deaths, our defeat, is our victory. Because like them, we've given others two precious gifts; time and hope. With every SPARTAN, with every soldier who stood here in defiance, who fought back and kept Reach in the fight for just a few minutes longer, time has been bought for the rest of humanity. And with the delivery of the AI to the Pillar of Autumn, we've given them hope, a chance to succeed where we have fallen._

_Now the Covenant, endless like the Persian hordes, surrounds and descends upon me. They will kill me. But they won't beat me. They won't break my spirit, my will to resist; they will have the fight of their lives in order to secure my death. This is my end, this is my victory. This is my legacy to the human race._

_This is my Thermopylae._

"_Stranger! To Sparta say, her faithful band,_

_Here lie in death, remembering her command."_

_~ Translation of the Epitaph of Simonides by Francis Hodgson_


End file.
